July 2019 • Volume 26 • Issue 2

AbleCommerce July 2019 Announcements

AbleCommerce 9 Final with Content Management System Released!

The time has arrived for the next generation of AbleCommerce ecommerce software, with a new and easy-to-use content management system that allows you to edit any page in the store (see video).

Look at what you can do –

Change any text on any page
Change colors, fonts, and CSS
Create new content and place it anywhere on the page
Create unlimited and customizable content pages
Add a blog to your ecommerce store
Move, edit, and add new widgets to any page in the store
Create a custom layout and page design and apply it to one or more pages
Customers can search content or products
Add new search engine friendly URLs

Our new content management system and website editing system are major features that allow you to make modifications without ever touching any code. It's now an easy task to add HTML, banners, videos, and images to your store without any HTML knowledge or developer assistance. Keeping your site up-to date-and adding new content are some of the best ways to improve your Google search rankings and keep your customers coming back..

Preview color changes of buttons, header text, footer text and fonts before applying.

Please signup for a free 14 day online demo or download to install on your own server.

AbleCommerce 9 is the ONLY PA-DSS 3.2 Certified ASP.net Shopping Cart!

Did you know that only 14 companies have a current certification for their ecommerce application? Eleven of which are either vertical market or high-end enterprise-level applications. That makes AbleCommerce 1 of 3 shopping cart applications which are aimed at providing small to medium businesses with the official backing from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. Chase bank has stopped onboarding new merchants without this certification, and there will likely be other major banking institutions to do the same. It’s not worth the risk, so keep your customer’s data secure!

Complete Content Management System

Let's take a deeper dive into the content management system. AbleCommerce has been able to add webpage content to a store for over a decade, so what's new?

With AbleCommerce 9 you can perform WYSIWYG editing from the retail side with a preview before publishing capability.
You can easily add HTML blocks to the page and re-arrange the content on the page with a smooth drag and drop system.
You can change the colors of common store elements such as buttons, background, input forms, and text with a color picker. Want to change the font type in your store? You can do that too.
It's now easy to change store text with our localization system. You no longer have to edit files to make a label change like the 'Add to Cart' button where you prefer it say 'Add to Basket'. Just mouse over the text, click edit icon and update it to your preference.
Create entirely new page layouts for webpages, categories, products, and blog pages using the industry standard bootstrap 12 column layout with our visual designer.
For those that are familiar with AbleCommerce Gold, all of the past conlib controls are replaced with widgets, which can be dropped onto the page in preview mode. Many of the widgets allow you easily edit the display settings without referencing any HTML code or documentation.
When you are modifying content on the retail side, your changes only affect the page you are on. You can also make broad storewide changes using the content management system on the administrative side. The system is flexible enough to allow for mass updates and individual page overrides.

New Responsive Administration

Process orders on the go, at the beach, or anywhere in the world using the new mobile responsive administration. The entire merchant admin has been brought up-to-date by utilizing the latest HTML and JavaScript techniques to make tasks as quick and easy as possible. You will no longer have to search your computer to upload images, simply drag and drop them into the upload box and they are auto-resized for you.

All New Responsive store

New streamlined HTML and cascading style sheets load fast on mobile devices and are highly optimized for search engine rankings. Our new store layout allows for the use of much larger product images, giving customers the kind of product detail that they expect today. The programming code is upgraded to MVC which cleanly separates application code from the HTML code, so designers won’t have to wade through pages they don't understand. This makes it simple for designers to quickly implement a custom storefront design!

New Features

A key safety feature has been integrated to keep your store safe and secure. Enable Google's multi-factor authentication to make sure that only authorized users will be able to access the merchant administration.
Google Recaptcha can be used instead of the standard image captcha to replace the obsolete (and often difficult to read) number verification on login. Google Recaptcha is now standard for human detection, so you can keep your customer-facing forms secure from automated or blunt-force attacks.
The new “Shipping Groups” feature allows you to handle challenging shipping scenarios while keeping the customer’s choices easy to manage. In the prior version, multiple warehouses had to be used to offer different shipping options, which resulted in multiple shipments and higher shipping costs. With Ship Groups, you can set up common shipping methods and then apply them to products of the same type that ship by the same methods. This results in fewer selections for the customer and a lower total shipping costs.
Google Structured Product Data improves your product listing on Google. According to the Search Engine Journal:

"Structured data is an important part of gaining visibility online. Structured data offers the benefits of enhanced listings and the ability to rank better. ... It is in the interest of all search marketers to add structured data to their web pages in order to gain an edge over the competition."

If you have used our previous version, then you are likely familiar with “Featured Products” management. In this version, you will also be able to create “Featured Categories” and use the built-in widget to display them on most pages.
A product “unit” field is now available for any product so you can specify exactly what the price applies to. e.g. $5.00 per dozen or $25 per hour.
There are many feature enhancements on the admin side to make your day-to-day tasks quicker and easier! We’ve implemented new pages where you can use a variety of search parameters to find products and assign (or unassign) them with quick mass updates.

Past NEWS you may of missed

New Subscription Based Pricing

Over the last 25 years things have changed (a bit), though one thing has remained the same for our team. Our goal of helping individuals and companies succeed. In 2019, we are taking bold steps outside of what we've done over the last two-and-a-half decades, with the goal of helping even more startups with a robust ecommerce system as their foundation for success. With the introduction of a free edition for startups and new subscription-based pricing model, nearly anyone can leverage AbleCommerce to power their dreams.

ALERT: Remove your AbleCommerce GOLD /install Directory!

While assisting customers with support issues we are seeing the dashboard alert to remove the install directory more frequently than we should be..which is never. Leaving the directory in place can allow bad actors to shutdown your store by altering the database connection string or license key.

Tax Experts Explain Supreme Court Decision on Nexus

In the recent South Dakota v. Wayfair case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Dakota, granting the state authority to impose sales tax obligations on out-of-state transactions.

What does this mean for online sellers, and how will it impact their business?

Our partners at Avalara are bringing together two leading tax policy experts - Scott Peterson and Rachel Le Mieux, CPA, CMI - to break down the ruling and explain:

Whether remote sellers need to file and register in more states
How the ruling affects future laws across other states
How to determine whether you’re on the hook for sales tax based on where you conduct business

This is one video you can't afford to miss!

Duration: One hour

Watch Now

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